August 29, 2011 AT 3:43 pm

Being good at math could be like winning the lottery 4 times…

But now that luck is being called into question by some who think that winning the lottery four times is more than just a coincidental spell of good fortune.

First, she won $5.4 million, then a decade later, she won $2million, then two years later $3million and in the summer of 2010, she hit a $10million jackpot.

The odds of this has been calculated at one in eighteen septillion and luck like this could only come once every quadrillion years.

The Texas Lottery Commission [said] that [she]… must have been ‘born under a lucky star’, and that they don’t suspect foul play.

…

Mr Rich details the myriad ways in which [she] could have gamed the system – including the fact that she may have figured out the algorithm that determines where a winner is placed in each run of scratch-off tickets.

That’s not “gaming” that is using science!

This is an interesting story, if it was straight up statistics this could be a good campaign and a way to encourage anyone to pursue mathematics.

Being good at math is like winning the lottery, 4 times!

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